Completely biased reviews and fangirling

Dropped: School 2017

I’m admitting defeat, you guys. I know that lots of folks found this show enjoyable and even kinda cracky, but 11.14 episodes into this one (yes, I actually calculated that, just for funsies), I’m throwing in the towel. I guess I just.. don’t get it?

Even though Show served up a range of ingredients that ought to have appealed to me – student struggles, teacher struggles, friendships, crushes, a heroine with a backbone, and even a star-crossed bromance plus a hottie whose visuals are right up my alley – I just couldn’t get into this one.

Try as I might, I just couldn’t seem to care about any of it.

That’s right. I couldn’t seem to care about any of these guys. Eep.

STUFF THAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME

With other shows that I’ve dropped, I often start out liking it and then end up not liking it. This time, though, I didn’t even start out liking this one, y’all.

Wait. Before you call me crazy, let me explain.

Partly because I’ve enjoyed this franchise’s recent offerings (I hearts-in-eyes lovedSchool 2013, and then really enjoyed School 2015), and also partly because I’d seen a pretty good amount of squee over this installment, I had pretty positive hopes about liking this one. At the same time, I’d also seen a number of tweets in my Twitter feed along the lines of, “Ok, NOW I’m hooked #School2017,” which made me think that I might not like this one right away, but that somewhere along the line, Show was gonna get good.

Which is how I found myself asking after the first 5 episodes (while feeling distinctly disengaged through each of those 5 episodes), “When does this get good? Or, am I just not gonna feel this one, ever?”

Things got relatively better between episodes 6 to 10, but after episode 11, I found myself resignedly starting to conclude that maybe I really wasn’t going to feel this one, ever, after all.

Here’s a quick breakdown of all the stuff that just didn’t land so well, for me.

Patchy storytelling

I didn’t find the storytelling in this show very cohesive nor very tight, and that was a big downer in my watch.

Right away from Show’s initial episodes, I felt like the story wasn’t gelling together, somehow. All the information served up felt fragmented and all over the place, and while I had hoped that things would get more cohesive after set-up was complete, the story that Show was working to tell never quite felt like a properly integrated whole.

Sometimes, Show would make reference to details as if these details had already been communicated to us, but in actual fact, these details hadn’t been played out onscreen or in-story. This mismatch was bemusing and confusing, and didn’t help matters at all.

[SPOILERS] For example, in episode 7, Eun Ho (Kim Se Jung) is asked if she’s going to her manhwa hagwon and she says yes she is. Now, as a viewer who hadn’t missed a single episode up till that point, and who hadn’t used the fast forward function at all, I was genuinely surprised. When did she start, I wondered, and why hadn’t we seen her attend a single class, if it was so important to her?

I also felt surprised when Show mentioned in the same episode that Eun Ho didn’t need to try to clear her name anymore. I seriously wondered if I had missed something, coz last I remembered (up till that point in the story), she’d been tasked with finding X, in order to clear her name. [END SPOILERS]

I tried to give Show a bit of the benefit of the doubt, like, maybe I hadn’t been paying close enough attention, and that’s why I missed something. But on further thought, I decided that these were the kinds of details where I really shouldn’t need to be paying that kind of close attention in order to not miss it.

In addition to these problems, I also felt that the overall story was always lagging, for some reason. I mean, Show clearly tried to spread its focus to cover the daily struggles of the average high school student in Korea, from status, to bullying, to unfairness in the system, but it just wasn’t landing with as much oomph as I would have hoped for. It all felt watered down, and the stories all weren’t having much of an impact on me.

The school & its staff

As a general rule, the school staff felt like caricatures to me instead of actual fleshed-out characters. I found the principal (Kim Eung Soo) too dumb and theatrical, and our resident good guy Teacher Shim (Han Joo Wan) too timid and boring.

In addition, the entire school environment is set up to be supposedly dark and difficult for students, but comes across as try-hard and not very believable at all. It felt like Show was trying to be shocking and disturbing, but it just wasn’t landing for me. Instead, it felt like Show was making mountains out of molehills with narrative conflicts that I didn’t find engaging, and in the end, to my eyes, it all felt like a big deal over nothing very much at all. [SPOILER] In particular, I found the whole merit-demerit system that had students reporting each other and being suspicious of each other extra try-hard. [END SPOILER]

The Thing with X

The whole arc around the mystery of X didn’t grab me either.

For the first 4 episodes, we are not told who X is, and Show used that to dangle red herrings at us, in terms of X’s identity. This.. didn’t help. In fact, because Show was trying so hard to be clever about those darn red herrings (maybe X is this guy.. or maybe it’s this guy..), it gave me bad Who’s The Hubs vibes from the Answer Me series. After a while, I realized that I didn’t care one bit, who X was. I felt that the question of X was just muddying up the equation (ooh, look at that, I made a math pun, ha), and would’ve preferred to have X taken out of the entire picture, so that we could have characters presented as they were, instead of being fake-presented as a possible X.

Show reveals X’s identity to us in episode 4, and I felt that as a result of Show not trying to be purposefully mysterious anymore, the storytelling actually became a little more cohesive.

The thing is, though, Show just wouldn’t let the X thing go.[SPOILER] When Hee Chan (Kim Hee Chan) acts up in episode 10 and starts baiting X, that felt tired, to me. Instead of feeling like there was added dramatic tension, it felt like, Oh man, are we going back to X, AGAIN? Not very helpful, I thought. [END SPOILER]

The star-crossed bromance

The first bleeding hearts bromance to steal my heart was in School 2013 (Heung-Soon foreva!), so I’m disappointed to say that I simply was not drawn to the backstory and tragedy behind Tae Woon (Kim Jung Hyun) and Dae Hwi’s (Jang Dong Yoon) strained relationship.

It’s really strange. Even after Show had clued me in on the tragedy behind the broken bromance between Tae Woon and Dae Hwi, I felt detached and unmoved. In part, I think it’s due to the writing of this star-crossed bromance. The scenes and dialogue didn’t have the kind of emotional heft that grabs my heart. Plus, the script doesn’t allow much room for the boys to actually reconcile. Out of the 11 episodes that I watched, there were only a few small concessions that hinted at a potential mending of the relationship. 11 episodes is way too much time spent on the boys being at loggerheads, in my opinion, especially since Show only has 16 episodes.

At the same time, I also feel like the lack of spark in this star-crossed bromance is because of the lack of chemistry between the 2 actors. I just didn’t feel the burgeoning emotion between them like I did between Nam Soon and Heung Soo in School 2013. When they got angry with each other, they were – simply – angry. I couldn’t detect layers of love and angst rippling beneath the surface, and as a result, all the scenes between Tae Woon and Dae Hwi felt rather flat and lacking to me. I didn’t – couldn’t! – feel the stakes.

The relationship between Dae Hwi & Nam Joo

As part of Show’s attempt to showcase the various struggles of our students, we get to see the problems in Dae Hwi’s relationship with Nam Joo (Sul In Ah).

I believe Show is working to give us a sense of how much students suffer from peer pressure, and what that looks like when the peer pressure is about living the high life and being rich. We are served a fair amount of angst, particularly on Nam Joo’s part. To be honest, though, I couldn’t bring myself to care. [SPOILER] Like in episode 11, when Nam Joo felt sad about her breakup with Dae Hwi, and when she told him that she felt uncomfortable about lying, I basically felt.. nothing. [END SPOILER]

I believe it’s both the fault of the delivery and the writing. Sul In Ah’s delivery is limited and leans flat (as do many of the other performances in this show), and the arc itself didn’t feel fleshed out enough.

Angry Hee Chan

In Show’s second half, Hee Chan gets played up as angry, angsty and pretty nasty. It felt like Show was gunning for a lot of dramatic tension from this arc, but it just didn’t work for me.

I feel like Show was trying to make Hee Chan the character menacing and therefore interesting, but Kim Hee Chan the actor just doesn’t have the depth and dimension required to make his angsty, angry lines believable. Kim Hee Chan’s delivery comes across as pretty two-dimensional, like he’s going through the motions of appearing angry, but there’s no actual substance to that anger, which therefore makes the angst not very believable at all.

Overall, I didn’t feel for this character, one way or the other. I neither felt sorry for him, nor did I hate him the way Show was prompting me to, with his cruel and self-centered behavior. I’m pretty sure that after so much effort on Show’s part, that indifference really wasn’t what they were going for.

Bo Ra’s turnaround

In episode 10, Bo Ra (Han Bo Bae), who had been reticent and sullen through most of the show, demonstrates a full turnaround. I found this overly simplistic, to be honest.

[SPOILER] In Show’s second half, we learn that Bo Ra had been suffering from serious depression, which had been triggered by a number of unfortunate events. She had suffered physical and emotional abuse by Hee Chan while dating him. On top of that, she’d been traumatized after being betrayed by a teacher (Jo Mi Ryung) whom she had trusted. In addition, she had been bullied and abused by her classmates. All pretty heavy stuff. So her quick recovery from that depression, from which she had been suffering for a whole year, felt too fast to be natural.

In a quick couple of episodes, with friendship offered by Eun Ho and Tae Woon, she’s suddenly standing up for herself quite easily, and talking back to bullies Hee Chan and Bit Na (Z.Hera), and smiling and laughing with her new friends. I found that really hard to believe. Just because she now has 2 friends, doesn’t magically make her depression go away. So even though Show was making a happy fuss about Bo Ra’s turnaround in episode 10, it all felt kind of hollow to me. [END SPOILER]

GLIMMERS OF HOPE

Well. That was quite a lot of not-so-great stuff, eh? The thing is, I’m not even being that exhaustive. But you get the idea. Show’s attempts at bringing these characters to life just wasn’t working for me.

So why did I even watch 11 episodes of this? Here’s why:

Kim Jung Hyun as Tae Woon

In a sea of blah, Kim Jung Hyun immediately stood out to me coz he looks like Kim Woo Bin’s little brother. And you guys know I’ve had a big soft spot for Woob for a while now. I just had to give Woob-lite a chance to properly wow me.

The bottom line is, I think Kim Jung Hyun could do with more screen presence. When Tae Woon was being angsty, I felt that the delivery didn’t carry enough heft to leave a proper impact.

That said, I found Tae Woon interesting enough to be counted as a highlight of this show, for me.

For one thing, besides reminding me of Woob with his lanky frame, strong brows and angular jaw, he also reminds me of Lee Dong Wook, with his bedroomy eyes, full lips, and smirky half-smile. I found this Kim Woo Bin-Lee Dong Wook combination both amusing and confusing, and I just had to see more of this boy, just to try and wrap my brain around this weird and wonderful discovery.

The Lee Dong Wook thing is best seen in motion, but, dya see it here? Do ya?

Additionally, Tae Woon does have his cute moments, and that helped quite a bit.

Every time Tae Woon made moony-type eyes at Eun Ho, or did something to try and get her attention or make her happy, I squeed a little. It’s mostly coz he was this big lug of a guy who had always been too cool for school, and here he was being the biggest dork, trying to hover around the girl he liked. That was pretty fun.

Behold said moony eyes

The connection between Eun Ho & Tae Woon

I enjoyed watching the growing bond between Tae Woon and Eun Ho, and I liked the idea that these two very different individuals could become friends who could support and be there for each other.

Every time these two demonstrated a bit of teamwork, I cheered a little. And each time they talked with each other and gained a little bit more in terms of mutual understanding, I did a mental fist pump. I liked this burgeoning friendship so much that I was happy to ignore all of Show’s downsides, in order to witness more of the journey that these unlikely friends shared.

Of course, things did get pretty cute too, when Tae Woon started to struggle with his rising confusing romantic feelings towards Eun Ho.

[SPOILER] While I found Tae Woon’s petty jealousies moderately amusing, what I liked even more, was how Tae Woon liking Eun Ho became an openly acknowledged, matter-of-fact thing between them. I just really enjoyed the fact that they could refer to it so casually, even though Eun Ho hadn’t given Tae Woon an answer one way or another. When Eun Ho was downcast and discouraged in episode 10, I liked how Tae Woon asked Eun Ho where the Eun Ho who would fight to the death was, coz that’s the Eun Ho that he liked. His exaggerated fluttering heart beating under his shirt was pretty hilarious too. [END SPOILER]

SAYING GOODBYE

The thing is, by episode 11, the cute disappeared. All that was left was a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t like about this show, and I felt my interest levels drop, fast. So I went away and experimented by watching Lingerie Girls’ Generation, just to see if I still liked high school stories. Short answer: turns out I do.

So I came back to School 2017 and decided to give it another go – and lasted all of 10 minutes, ha.

Eun Ho and Tae Woon weren’t being at all cute together in episode 12. Worse, for the life of me, I couldn’t follow the logic of their arguments. I mean, I listened to what they said, but neither of them made much sense to me. That didn’t help. For the record, these two are very un-cute together when they are fighting. That didn’t help either.

I knew in my head that Eun Ho and Tae Woon would likely make up if I stuck around long enough, but I just couldn’t muster up the persistence to sit through another 4 hours of this show, just to see a bit of cute come back. I mean, let’s remember at this point, that I had almost zero interest in all the other story threads in this show.

And so, I rather regretfully conclude that despite the seeming majority of viewers loving this show, even a Kim Woo Bin-Lee Dong Wook hottie mash-up isn’t going to suck me into this one, no matter how hard I try.

35 thoughts on “Dropped: School 2017”

Watched a view episodes briefly…but I have to say the whole show is all over the place…
I am not the biggest fan of the highschool genre because all they do in korean highschools is bullying and fighting and if you watched dogko rewind then there were also 40 year old highshool students :DDDD
I have to agree with you on pretty much everything… Just mixing together a lot of good ingredients doesn’t always mean the result will be good….

Another drama with an idol in it… I mean what are actual actors for, right?
Kim Se jeong is not very good at acting but because there has been a general hype about this girl back then and now once more, she shows up everywhere… I don’t even get what that hype is about….
A lot of dramas these days get ruined because they cast idols… I mean korean fans like that kind of stuff because if their bias or whatever is in it, it has to be good…

Hi there Larius! YAY that we agree on this show, boo that it was such a disappointment! 😆 As for the idols, I do think that there are some who are very solid with the acting, and I love those pleasant surprises. But, I have to admit that the whole reason the idols are there to begin with, is to push ratings. Idols have a ready fanbase who are ready and willing to support their idol in their next project, unconditionally, and networks want to bank on that to secure ratings. So unfortunately, it’s all about the money, in the end. But, thanks to this habit of Korea casting idols in acting projects, I’ve enjoyed some very solid actors. Siwon is excellent, as is Lee Joon, and IU is really good too, just to name a few. 🙂

If you’re game to try another, better installment of this School franchise, I loved School 2013. I thought it was very well done, and watched it twice. Strong male bonding friendship in the center, no romance, and thoughtfully written. 🙂

You lasted way longer than me. I couldn’t stand it after only like 4 episodes. I may watch it again sometime just to say that I finished the whole School 20- whatever series, but I will wait for some time. School 2013 was amazing (that bromance though), School 2015 was okay to me, but this one is one of only two dramas that I couldn’t finish.

I wanted to like this one too, but I found that I just couldn’t get into it. The whole reason I lasted as long as I did, is because I was under the impression that Show would eventually hook me, mostly because of all the tweets I saw. I think if I had avoided Twitter and hadn’t seen those tweets about how good S2017 got, I would’ve probably dropped out sooner, lol. I personally wouldn’t go back to this one, but hey, lots of folks loved this one, so maybe you’ll feel differently the second time around? 😉

It took me 3 episodes to get into School 2017. I was just getting ready to drop in episode 3 but it seemed to hit its strike and stayed with it. I was overall charmed by the middle section and don’t regret finishing the drama, but it was chore wading through the last three episodes. I actually skimmed through quite a bit of stuff by that point.

I absolutely think they kept the X storyline going way too long and that this drama would have worked so much better with 12 episodes. I felt absolutely nothing about any adult characters on this show even the homeroom teacher. However, I actually liked that I had no idea who the lead guy was for multiple episodes….was it the A student or the bad boy? I found that kind of fun. Normally I know going in, but I just decided to go with it and was just fine with it being Kim Woo Bin’s little brother. I also appreciated there wasn’t a love triangle.

So I have fond memories of the drama with the caveat that I skipped stuff I wasn’t interested in and, unfortunately, a lot of that was toward the end when I should have been totally invested. I really wish the Korean tv people would just do the # of episodes necessary to tell the story instead of pigeon holing the dramas in the 16/20/24 episodes.

You did better with this one than I did, Kat! I think you were wise to FF through the boring parts – I should’ve done that too. But I didn’t, coz I was waiting for the sense of giddy squee that people seemed to feel about this show, to finally hit me. And it never did. I really ought to learn to trust myself more, and other people’s squee less! 😆

I completely agree that the dramas should be given the number of episodes they need to tell their story, rather than trying to fill a predetermined number of episodes. It’s complicated, I guess. As viewers we all want story integrity, but the powers that be need to consider commercial aspects, and PPL, and all that stuff. It’s getting to a point where story integrity is REALLY suffering these days, though, and more dramas are misses than hits. That’s a pretty big problem, in my opinion. Hopefully somebody with the power to do something sees that it’s a problem too. 😐

I really think this was the core of the problem with this show (and LOTS of other ones, too, btw) This story could have been adequately told in 8, maybe 10 episodes. If they had even cut four episodes, the story would have been much tighter and (perhaps) the faults not so noticeable?

This would be a worthwhile theme for an essay, no? The many shows that would have been better/watchable with fewer episodes and the very few that would have been better with MORE episodes.

too bad you didn’t like the show. this is the first time we have different taste, hehe. i’ve read most of your reviews and so far we had the same taste. but here i am watching school 2017 with big smile. but your point on the bad stuff about this drama not entirely wrong though, this drama was a bit boring in the middle, and i also found the x thing annoying too. but i still watched it because for me it was still good. and there was kim jung hyun! he was adorable throughout the drama *sigh*

Aw, Kim Jung Hyun was definitely a plus point to this drama! In that respect, we are in complete agreement, Olla! 😉 It’s too bad that the rest of the show didn’t work for me the way it did for you, but I’m glad you’re able to give the show some love on my behalf! Also – yay that we’ve been in agreement so much of the time! Looks like barring the odd exception, we have pretty similar drama tastes! 😀

I just finished watching School 2017 a few hours ago, and I used the fast forward button very heavily in the last 3-4 episodes. I felt like the show had some sparkle at first, but it beat it down with dullness, convoluted plotlines with no emotional heft, and that stupid X line that would just never die. I agree with everything you’ve said here!

Oh my, hi5 buckdawna! 😀 I feel like we are so on the same page with this one! THANK YOU, you’ve just made me feel that I made the right decision to drop it when I did, since you’ve just vouched for the 4 hours that I didn’t watch, heh. Now I really have no regrets about not finishing this! 😂 And you put it so well, that darn X storyline really just refused to die! 😂

Sorry, you couldn’t make through, and here I loved School 2017 but found Lingerie Girls’ Generation really boring and dropped it about after 30 minutes. But, then again, I haven’t really liked any of the Reply series and it felt like a rehash of those.

That’s so sad, and so funny at the same time, lucille! (Great to see you again, btw!) I guess in this case, it also boils down to personal taste. If you’re not into nostalgic retro type stories, then it’s highly unlikely that Lingerie Girls’ Generation would appeal to you. I love them myself, so I was poised to like it from the get-go, and Show did a solid job of being what it set out to be, so that was a win-win for me. 🙂 As for School 2017, I’m just gonna have to put it down to me not getting it, once again. I know you’re not alone in loving it, since so many people on my Twitter feed seemed to love it too. Somehow though, it just didn’t work for me the way it worked for so many other viewers. Drama love works in such mysterious ways, sometimes! 😉

I actually watched all of School 2017 and found it a pleasant enough watch but thoroughly unmemorable. Yeah, it did dabble on this and that but I never felt like any of it was urgent or even mattered much in the long run. I do think you nailed all the points that didn’t quite work.

Another thing I didn’t much like was the focus on romance, especially towards the end. I don’t generally mind romance as a part of the package but when it takes over I loose interest. I always thought that S2013 worked so well because it’s focus was more in all the other things. There was more time to introduce us to other characters beyond the main twosome, as lovely as that bromance was. One of my fave things about S2013 was how they handled the bullies storyline. Jung Oh was probably the character I felt most for. With S2017 I never got the feeling I should care a whit for any of the characters or their struggles.

All in all School 2017 was… how should I say it, lacking in raw emotion. As you wrote, watered down.

Oh wow, you finished this one?? 😳 I thought you wouldn’t, since this one just doesn’t seem to have what it takes, to hold your attention! Kudos to you for sticking it out 😉

I completely agree; S2013 probably worked so well because it wasn’t pouring all of its screen time into a romance. There was just a lot of well-spread attention over the various story threads, and they did a really good job teasing out the emotions in each one. I mean, I was completely taken with the bromance, as you know, but I also genuinely felt for the other characters too. Jung Oh was a good arc.. and I thought the teacher arc with Jang Na Ra was very good too. The feels were all there, and Show didn’t need romance to make it happen. Guh. Still my favorite of the School series, hands down. ❤

In this one, you're so right, it just never hit that raw emotional nerve. Kinda like a trainee nurse trying to find a vein and jabbing everywhere tryna find one, but never quite getting it right, heh. 😝

Weeellll, it was sort of a bland snack I watched in between other things with a generous helping of the FF-button. 😁 Guess I didn’t have anything much to watch right then. If it was now, I’d given it Das Boot already.^^

Haha! Ok, that does put a new perspective on things! 😂 I giggled at your description of this one as a bland snack, that is so perfect! 🤣 Also, yay me, I am definitely becoming more in tune with your drama tastes and requirements; I just had a feeling this was one you would drop, heh. 😉

I personally don’t think this one is worth the time, but that could be just me, since lots of other people seem to like it. If you’re keen on this one, maybe try dipping your toes in for a couple of eps? If it doesn’t grab you within a few eps, it probably won’t grab you later either – at least, that was my experience with this one! 😉

YAY!! 😀 You will REALLY love those 2, especially together 😍 So much bro-love, whether they’re angsting or not. I would say, though, that if you still hope to have any love for School 2017, then you should give School 2017 a chance first. Coz once you’ve seen (& probably loved!) School 2013, S2017 is gonna pale in comparison, and by quite a lot, in my estimation 😛😉

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June 2, 2020

It’s been a long minute since I’ve written a Musings post, but something Beez said got me thinking, and here’s my breakdown of what I think are the 4 stages of Drama Viewer Evolution. 😁 Hope you guys enjoy the read! ❤️

Huge thank you to Jesse, for writing such a fantastic guest post for the blog! 🤩🥳 Come get a peek at the inner workings that factor into onscreen chemistry! 😄

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